


close is close enough in horse cigars

by orphan_account



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: 8th Anniversary Popularity Poll, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:20:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24613666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Look on the bright side,” Iwaizumi suggested. “Japan likes you over twenty-six percent more than they like Miya Atsumu.”“Tsumu-chan is a living, breathing ball of personality defects. Japan is supposed to like me more.” Oikawa’s eyebrows remained scrunched up, his whole face looking like a pictorial depiction of the soundharrumph. “They’re also supposed to like me more than Tobio-chan.”
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 19
Kudos: 105





	close is close enough in horse cigars

**Author's Note:**

> the 8th anniversary popularity poll results raised me from the dead

“One hundred and sixty-seven,” Oikawa seethed.

“It’s just a popularity poll,” Iwaizumi said.

“Twenty-one thousand two hundred minus twenty-one thousand thirty-three is one hundred and sixty-seven.”

“It literally means nothing.”

“I’m literally inconsolable.” Oikawa’s legs were dangling over the edge of the couch. He kicked his feet and wriggled like a distressed earthworm, unsexily grinding the back of his head against Iwaizumi’s crotch until Iwaizumi relented and started to stroke his hair again.

“Look on the bright side,” Iwaizumi suggested. “Japan likes you over twenty-six percent more than they like Miya Atsumu.”

“Tsumu-chan is a living, breathing ball of personality defects. Japan is supposed to like me more.” Oikawa’s eyebrows remained scrunched up, his whole face looking like a pictorial depiction of the sound _harrumph_. “They’re also supposed to like me more than Tobio-chan.”

Iwaizumi hummed sympathetically, albeit half-heartedly. His laptop was open on the coffee table in front of him, and a new email from his thesis supervisor had just come in. When he reached out with his free hand to check it, Oikawa knocked his hand away and slapped his laptop shut.

“Tooru,” Iwaizumi warned, his fingers stilling in Oikawa’s hair. “Right now, _I’m_ struggling to like you more than Kageyama.”

Oikawa blinked up at him, his eyes going alienishly large. His grumpy, discontented expression slid off his face for the first time since he pulled up the poll results on his phone. It was replaced by a look of horror, disbelief, and outraged indignance.

Then he tumbled off the couch with all the grace of a newborn deer and stomped into their bedroom, slamming the door behind himself. Iwaizumi frowned at the closed door, sighed, and had to admit he’d been, maybe, a little too harsh.

“How is Oikawa?” Ushijima asked.

Iwaizumi wavered a hand in midair, as though to say _so-so_. “He says he’s inconsolable.”

They were at their usual driving range, where they met once a month to hit golf balls and catch up. It was a tradition they’d established in the years since Ushijima and Oikawa signed contracts with their respective pro teams in Osaka.

Three days had passed since the results of the eminently pointless Men’s National Team Popularity Poll were printed in VX4, a quarterly volleyball magazine that was more of a thinly-veiled tabloid than a proper sports publication. Oikawa was still moping, refusing to leave the house for anything except practice and shooting Iwaizumi scathing, betrayed looks every so often, as though Iwaizumi had personally cast a vote for Kageyama.

“I thought he was over it,” Iwaizumi admitted. “The Kageyama thing.”

Ushijima hummed noncommittally, but he was probably listening. He was a good listener, Iwaizumi had learned. He was just still relatively bad at emoting.

“It was a stupid popularity contest,” Iwaizumi continued. “It doesn’t make Kageyama the better setter.”

“I imagine Oikawa is accustomed to winning popularity contests.”

“Yeah.” Iwaizumi swung his club and watched his ball sail halfway down the course. “He is. And I get that it matters to him. I just don’t think it should.”

“Perhaps you should ask him why it does.”

Over the past three days, Iwaizumi had spent a great deal of time patiently, repeatedly reassuring Oikawa that the poll results didn’t matter. That it wasn’t an indicator of skill. That Oikawa’s official fan club had nearly twice as many members as Kageyama’s, so wasn’t Oikawa the real winner after all?

He’d spent all that time patiently, repeatedly, and dismissively reassuring Oikawa. Which was maybe not so great.

Iwaizumi frowned and looked over at Ushijima. “When’d you get so good at understanding people?”

“Tendou says I should try to put myself in the shoes of other people,” Ushijima said. He looked down. “It’s difficult with Oikawa. I believe he has smaller feet.”

Iwaizumi stared at Ushijima like he had grown a pair of sproingy green antennae, or like he had cracked a joke. A beat passed in silence, punctured only by sounds from other bays, until Iwaizumi threw back his head and started to laugh.

When Iwaizumi got home that afternoon, Oikawa was on the couch, cocooned in blankets, watching game tapes and worrying his thumb with his teeth. Iwaizumi put away the groceries he’d picked up before joining Oikawa on the couch and peeling back the blankets one by one.

Once he unearthed Oikawa’s disheveled head, he grabbed the remote and muted the TV.

“Tell me why it matters,” he said.

Oikawa looked at him out of the corner of his eye. He hadn’t been sleeping well, again, if the faint shadows beneath his own eyes were any indication. “You kept saying it doesn’t.”

“I wasn’t listening,” Iwaizumi admitted. “I’m listening now. Tell me why it’s important to you.”

Oikawa huffed and turned his attention back to the television where an old match continued to play out, soundlessly. He hugged his knees to his chest and didn’t budge for a long time, even when Iwaizumi put an arm around his shoulders and, impatiently, prodded him in the side.

He didn’t speak up again until the game ended, three sets to one, 25-23 in the final set, with Kageyama’s Adlers emerging victorious. “I’m not a better setter than Tobio-chan.”

Iwaizumi frowned and put a hand on Oikawa’s forehead, which Oikawa promptly slapped away.

“I’m not _worse_ ,” Oikawa continued. “On the court, we’re equals. Quit looking at me like that. I haven’t lost my mind, I’ve matured. I’m an adult. I can admit Tobio-chan has reached my level.”

“Okay,” Iwaizumi said. That was good. That was progress. Character development. Wasn’t that good?

“We’re equals on the court,” Oikawa repeated, “but people are supposed to like me more. I’m prettier.”

“You are.”

“I’m nicer.”

“You’re alright.”

Oikawa grabbed a couch cushion and whacked Iwaizumi in the face. “Do you know who reads VX4? Housewives and high school girls. Housewives and high school girls are supposed to like me more!”

It still didn’t make a ton of sense to Iwaizumi, if he were to be totally honest. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing that should matter. But it didn’t have to make sense, he supposed. It didn’t have to be something rational for it to matter to Oikawa.

“I like you,” Iwaizumi said. He had Oikawa’s full attention right away with that, because it wasn’t something he said terribly often. “I like you enough for one hundred and sixty-seven people.”

Oikawa stared at him. All the tension seemed to bleed out of his body, leaving him boneless. Iwaizumi felt hot in the face. He was as unaccustomed to saying such gross, sappy things as Oikawa was to hearing them. To stave off embarrassment, he kept himself busy by rearranging their limbs while Oikawa was dazed, so they sat more comfortably, facing each other, with Oikawa in the vee of his legs.

“One hundred and sixty-eight,” Oikawa said, finally.

“Huh?”

“You have to like me enough for one hundred and sixty-eight people.” Oikawa flung his arms around Iwaizumi’s shoulders and clung to him like an overgrown koala. “It’s a tie if you only like me enough for one hundred and sixty-seven. I don’t want to tie with Tobio-chan, I want to beat him. So you have to like me enough for one hundred and sixty-eight people.”

“Fine. I like you enough for one hundred and sixty-eight people.”

Oikawa pulled back and studied Iwaizumi with an intense, scrutinizing expression. “Do you? Even though I’m spoiled and needy?”

Iwaizumi nodded. “You’re also an ugly crier.”

“Do you like me even though I have just as many personality defects as Tsumu-chan?”

“Don’t say that about yourself,” Iwaizumi chided. “You’re not wrong, but it’s my job to say that sort of thing.”

Oikawa huffed, but he was starting to smile. “So mean. I’m starting to think you don’t really like me at all. Are we living a lie? Is our marriage a sham?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Iwaizumi muttered. He grabbed Oikawa’s face between both hands and kissed him on the mouth. “I love you, dumbass. Enough for a hundred thousand people.”

Oikawa’s face lit up, happy and red. “Say it again. Without the dumbass.”

“Not a chance in hell.”


End file.
